Friday, April 27, 2012

Can I connect one CRT monitor, one LCD monitor, and one LCD TV to one video card?

I have a fairly old Dell 15" and a new Samsung 19" currently connected to my computer. They both work fine together, as my Nvidia 6600 GT has dual output. Now, I want to add my 40" Haier TV (which has a VGA port) as a third screen.



Normally, I wouldn't think this possible with one video card, but I have a splitter that converts my DVI port on my PC into a DVI and VGA port. With 2 VGA ports and one DVI port (this is after using the splitter, of course) is it possible to connect three monitors to one video card?



I've already tried simply plugging in and restarting the computer, but that doesn't seem to work. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!|||It *seems* as if it should work. Both screens hooked up to the splitter should (will) show the same thing, of course.



The problem may be that most monitors today are plug-and-play. *That* means that your video board can detect what type of monitor is plugged into it. With two monitors plugged into one video socket, Windows probably gets pretty confused.



Another possibility is that you cannot connect a DVI *and* vga to the same video card connector at the same time. I know DVI analog is *compatible* with DB-15, but maybe DVI-analog uses lines in the graphics card that DB-15 does not and your graphics card is getting confused.



Perhaps you can force the issue by removing device drivers for those two "united" monitors and installing the "default monitor" driver instead. You should be able to get standard resolutions and maybe keep the OS from trying to find out what type of monitor is connected. This should solve the Plug-n-Play problem, but not the 2nd problem (if it is one).



Of course, you can always get another nVidia board - now you can support 4 monitors with 2 boards, and 7300LEs are *cheap*. :) Then you can get a different view on every screen instead of just two.



I hope this helps.



Jim

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